Rivalino Mafra da Silva disappearance
A boy told police that his father, a diamond prospector, vanished in yellow smoke after two hovering balls merged in front of their shack at Duas Pontes.
1962 CE · -18.25, -43.60 · status: account
The account
Twelve-year-old Raimundo Mafra da Silva reported that on the night of 19 August 1962 the family heard voices and saw shadows around their hut near Diamantina, Minas Gerais, and that next morning two humming, ball-shaped objects hovered outside. His father Rivalino walked toward them, the objects merged in a cloud of yellow smoke, and he was gone. The story came to ufology via Olavo Fontes and the local press.
The sceptical view
Rivalino was never found, but the story rests on a frightened child's report; later books embellished it or dropped details found in the earliest press accounts.
The researched reading
A real disappearance with only a child’s account of what happened. A frightened or coached child, or a human cause hidden behind the story, are more likely than a craft, though the case was never closed.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Perception, memory or mind | 34% | A frightened 12-year-old was the only witness; a child’s confused or dream-shaped account of a traumatic night, retold to police and press, is the most ordinary reading. |
| Undetermined | 25% | The share the reading had given to fabrication on doubt rather than evidence: the record does not settle it either way. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 15% | Rivalino was never found and the boy’s first account was consistent, but nothing beyond his word supports the vanishing. |
| Something known, misidentified | 8% | Two hovering humming balls at dawn could be distorted memories of lights or smoke from fires in the diamond-mining area. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 6% | Morning mist or smoke may explain the "yellow smoke" detail. |
| A poorly understood natural phenomenon | 6% | Ball lightning is spherical and can hover and vanish, though it does not make people disappear. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 5% | A man vanishing and a story covering it is a familiar pattern: he may have left, or been harmed, with the tale invented or coached afterwards. Police could not rule this out. |
| Secret human technology | 1% | No military activity fits rural Minas Gerais in 1962. |
Official position: Local police investigated the disappearance and found no explanation; Rivalino da Silva was never found.
Connections in the atlas
- José Antônio da Silva, Bebedouro
- João Prestes Filho, Araçariguama
- Boitatá in Anchieta's letter
- Antônio Vilas-Boas